Abstract
This study was conducted to determine the opinions, attitudes and the factors that affect these attitudes of nursing students about gender roles. The descriptive type of research using qualitative methods was carried out with 82 students studying at the nursing department of a university located in a province in the Western Black Sea Region. Data was collected using by a personal information form and a semi-structured interview form. The data was evaluated with content analysis. The average age of the students was 20.82 ± 1.08, 65.9% of them were women, 63.4% of them have 3 or more siblings. It was determined that the mother of 68.3% and the father of 92.7% of the students were high school or higher education. As a result of the content analysis, two themes related to gender perception were determined. The first theme was gender differences, and under this theme, there were sub-themes of being a woman and being a man. The second theme was gender perception in proverbs and idioms. Students mostly used expressions of difficulty, inadequate and violence for the female gender; they used expressions of power, authority and responsibility for the male gender. Gender perceptions of nursing students are positive, but when gender differences are taken into account, gender perceptions of male students are found to be more positive than female students.